A variety of portable electronic devices are widely available for both personal and business use. For example, there are a wide variety of types of cellular phones, portable radio communications devices, personal digital assistants (PDA's), portable computers, and combinations thereof currently on the market. These devices provide a wide range of services, ranging from Internet access to electronic mail to personal organization systems, to even various electronic games.
A persistent issue in these types of portable electronic devices relates to the increasing complexity of the devices themselves. With more and more features continuously being incorporated into the devices, there is a constantly increasing need to provide more methods of inputting information into the devices. At the same time, the devices themselves have become smaller and smaller as both technological advances have been made and as users have demanded more portable and easily-storable devices. This inherent conflict between the smaller devices and the need for more input mechanisms has been difficult to solve.
In devices such as personal digital assistants and miniature computers, a touch-sensitive screen is often included such that the user can use a stylus to directly manipulate icons, numbers or text on the screen. At the same time, these devices also usually include a number of standard hardware buttons that are manipulated to perform various functions.
In most cases, the touch-sensitive screen is manipulated strictly with a stylus, while the buttons are manipulated with a user's finger. Using the touch-sensitive screen and buttons at the same time is often difficult for a user, especially when the device is held in one hand during use.
In conventional portable electronic devices, the buttons are specifically designed for use with a user's fingers and are unsuitable for actuation by a stylus. In fact, it can be practically impossible to press buttons with a stylus in many cases, since the surface of the button is often smooth and slippery, and the buttons are often designed such that they must be pressed relatively hard to be actuated so as to prevent accidental actuations.
In response to this issue, systems have been developed that include buttons having a concave shape that is intended to prevent the stylus from slipping off of the button. Although reasonably useful, this modification fails to address the larger issue of the limited amount of space on such portable electronic devices, particularly in light of the constantly increasing number of features that are being incorporated into such devices.
It would therefore be desirable to develop a system that allows a user to easily interact the stylus with the buttons on a portable electronic device while at the same time providing the user with additional mechanisms for inputting information into the portable electronic device.